Читать книгу El Segundo - James Newton - Страница 10

The Cotton Wars

During the beginning of World War II, things were going badly with Japan, but it didn’t compare to the struggles of the share cropper.

Senator Jim Eastland had won his election and officially made prisoners of share croppers. While we weren’t prisoners of war, we were prisoners of cotton.

Exercising his rights as Share cropper King, Greenwood, Mississippi was designated as the cotton capital of the whole world. I heard Daddy tell my Mom, “Things are going from bad to worse”. We could all see it. The increased pressure on my dad fueled his taste for drinking moonshine whiskey which instead of easing his pressure and pain, just increased his anger and agony. In fact, the more my father suffered the more our family suffered.

Even though he was able to not let his drinking interfere with his farming and share cropping duties, Dad’s drinking was a constant source of conflict between my Mom and Dad.

Nonetheless, Mom stayed devoted to him. She recognized his strength and saw past the liquor into his family dedicated soul.

For the next 3 years, the hell that was our life in that insect infested Deep Slough swamp never changed. Listening from behind the doors, we could hear our parents talking about how exhausted Dad was. Mom was extremely troubled regarding our living conditions. She would say to my father, “Bryan, you need the Lord”. She would remind him of her Mother Ma Sally's Scallions preaching and the “Old Brush Arbor” Meeting.

But my Dad was a stubborn man who would make up his own mind. Dad would push back. Although he knew in his heart she was right, the more she counseled and prodded, the more Dad resisted. My brother and I were all too quick to follow our father’s way of thinking and example.

On Brush Arbor nights of worship, which occurred go on for a week or two at a time, and lasted until about midnight each night of the revival campaign, we looked for other methods of expressing our pain and anger at our situation.

Even though every night my Grandmother, “Ma Sally” would minster by using her God gifts of handling fire and rubbing her self with hot flames from hot oil. It was quite a carnival like spectacle, and in some ways felt as exciting as the carnival that came to Sumner once a year. But here you had God performing these ministry miracles through “Ma Sally” for free.

Of course, my brother and I wanted no part of the revivals by now. We were looking for ways to “get even” or at the very least do something that would agitate the Boss Man and Big Land Owners. We had learned how to make a bomb out of Carbide using a quart fruit jars.

So, off we went with our bomb. We walked south back to the main road. Then east about 500 hundred yards or so, and hid under the dredge ditch bridge that crossed the road.

Soon enough, we saw a car coming from Sumner or from the State Penitentiary. We could tell the car belonged to a Boss Man or Big Land because the car was bigger and newer and even the lights were brighter. We wanted revenge. And revenge we would have that night. Timing it perfectly, our bomb hit the car just as it crossed over the dredge ditch, the unexpected blast must caused the driver to think that Japan was attacking the U.S. Main Land.

This was the first of many of private war against King Cotton. We carried on our attacks night after night, until you couldn't get Plantation Land Owners car to cross that bridge. We were like a special and highly trained combat unit changing our tactics and locations. Using the cover and concealment, hiding in the underbrush and altering our times and positions, we would always leave time to scat back to the Brush Arbor before the meetings ended.

We were never missed. The believers were still praying, shouting, speaking in Holy Spirit Tongues, and enjoying the freedom from the torture of the share cropping fields. Most importantly, they were in the comfort and company of friends and family.

In due course, the news of the carbide bombings got out, the Big Man, the Antebellum Home owners thought it was the share croppers retaliating.

The road we guarded from Sumner to the penitentiary was a short cut. The Boss Man, The Big Man, these Plantation Land owners opted to take a longer route adding 20 extra miles to their trip. So, we won that battle however small. We were no longer just dirt farmers. We were just a few boys alive during World War II and born into the “Great Generation”.

Ma Sally Scallion seated in lower right corner and husband Umphus along with her family whom she taught the Secret of the Brush Arbor.